Just the Ticket #83: All Is Lost
All is lost for me, and has been for a few weeks now. My external hard drive recently crapped out on me, taking with it all the TV I watch, the music I have downloaded, game design projects, remixes I've done, comic book characters I have designed, every essay I've written going back to grade school, and the novel I have been working on most recently, which has crept slowly up to 38 pages.
The folks at Staples are working to recover whatever data may be left on the drive and hook me up with a new device, but progress is slow because they effectively have to digitally torture the damned thing to death to get it all. And it cost me $280 to boot (so to speak).
But I am not the only one for whom All Is Lost. Robert Redford plays "Our Man," the essentially unnamed, and only, character in a grueling survival story about a sailor who must rely on his wits and will (and blind faith in the relentless forces of nature) to endure until he can be rescued by a passing ship after his sailboat begins to sink in the doldrums 1200 miles from land. The culprit, a shipping container full of cheaply outsourced tennis shoes (could Captain Phillips be to blame?) that punctured his hull.
Oh, crap. Not another one of these damned movies! As I have said in the past, if you've seen one movie like Open Water, Dark Tide, Titanic, The Perfect Storm, Cast Away (and no, the aforementioned sneakers are not Wilson brand, but that would have been funny), Captain Phillips, etc., you've seen all of them a hundred times too many, right? That's what I thought, too. The prospect of watching a single person, surrounded by the big, blue nothing for two hours movie-time is something I try to avoid thinking about or investing myself in at all costs, but I still can't seem to help my cinemasochistic nature.
Why, you ask? Because every so often, a movie comes along like All is Lost, and I am surprised that I enjoy it. Even at his ripe age, Redford appears to do the majority of his own stunts (save a few back-of-the-head shots and blurry underwater minutiae), making Our Man's calmly grunt-filled acts of resourceful self-preservation all the more impressive. I could list and describe them all for you here, but the feeling behind it defies calculated description.
On top of that, Redford can act. He barely says a word, except to introduce us to the hopeless nature of his situation, and by the time he finally expresses frustration, we are both awed and peeved that it took him so long. Everything else he needs to convey is pure nonverbal genius in the withered, weathered, wincing form of Robert Redford's face, so why have dialogue or monologue, or logue of any kind at all?
Not to give anything away, but All is Lost turns out to be the proverbial anti-lost-at-sea film (had there ever been such a proverb to begin with, that is). It takes the formula of other movies of its kind and puts on an extra twist. I expected, as so often happens when I'm watching a lost-at-sea picture, to be hoping against reason for a happy ending, and I was. But I was also battered and bruised, much like the elements did to Our Man, by the spirit-crushing possibility that the hero would inevitably fail and die. Ergo, I was mind-fucked...again. I could ramble on and think of newly over-caffeinated re-phrasings of things I've already said, but I'll take a cue from Redford and cut the yapping short, only to say that the mind-fuck was ultimately a pleasant one, and whether All is truly Lost at the end is open to interpretation by those hopeful among us.
A
Stay tuned for what I hope to be good news regarding my data recovery, and a look at a pair of high-demand films: The Counselor and Dallas Buyer's Club.
The folks at Staples are working to recover whatever data may be left on the drive and hook me up with a new device, but progress is slow because they effectively have to digitally torture the damned thing to death to get it all. And it cost me $280 to boot (so to speak).
But I am not the only one for whom All Is Lost. Robert Redford plays "Our Man," the essentially unnamed, and only, character in a grueling survival story about a sailor who must rely on his wits and will (and blind faith in the relentless forces of nature) to endure until he can be rescued by a passing ship after his sailboat begins to sink in the doldrums 1200 miles from land. The culprit, a shipping container full of cheaply outsourced tennis shoes (could Captain Phillips be to blame?) that punctured his hull.
Oh, crap. Not another one of these damned movies! As I have said in the past, if you've seen one movie like Open Water, Dark Tide, Titanic, The Perfect Storm, Cast Away (and no, the aforementioned sneakers are not Wilson brand, but that would have been funny), Captain Phillips, etc., you've seen all of them a hundred times too many, right? That's what I thought, too. The prospect of watching a single person, surrounded by the big, blue nothing for two hours movie-time is something I try to avoid thinking about or investing myself in at all costs, but I still can't seem to help my cinemasochistic nature.
Why, you ask? Because every so often, a movie comes along like All is Lost, and I am surprised that I enjoy it. Even at his ripe age, Redford appears to do the majority of his own stunts (save a few back-of-the-head shots and blurry underwater minutiae), making Our Man's calmly grunt-filled acts of resourceful self-preservation all the more impressive. I could list and describe them all for you here, but the feeling behind it defies calculated description.
On top of that, Redford can act. He barely says a word, except to introduce us to the hopeless nature of his situation, and by the time he finally expresses frustration, we are both awed and peeved that it took him so long. Everything else he needs to convey is pure nonverbal genius in the withered, weathered, wincing form of Robert Redford's face, so why have dialogue or monologue, or logue of any kind at all?
Not to give anything away, but All is Lost turns out to be the proverbial anti-lost-at-sea film (had there ever been such a proverb to begin with, that is). It takes the formula of other movies of its kind and puts on an extra twist. I expected, as so often happens when I'm watching a lost-at-sea picture, to be hoping against reason for a happy ending, and I was. But I was also battered and bruised, much like the elements did to Our Man, by the spirit-crushing possibility that the hero would inevitably fail and die. Ergo, I was mind-fucked...again. I could ramble on and think of newly over-caffeinated re-phrasings of things I've already said, but I'll take a cue from Redford and cut the yapping short, only to say that the mind-fuck was ultimately a pleasant one, and whether All is truly Lost at the end is open to interpretation by those hopeful among us.
A
Stay tuned for what I hope to be good news regarding my data recovery, and a look at a pair of high-demand films: The Counselor and Dallas Buyer's Club.
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